"Two People," on its last legs at the Century South and Colonies North, is a film which many
viewers may believe they can take or leave at will.



But once taken, Robert Wise's quietly tragic motion picture tends to get under a receptive skin to a greater extent than seems either likely or defensible. There is relevance here, both blatant and subtle, and there is a very fetching quality to the concept and execution of "Two People."



Developing almost overnight into an actor of some depth, Peter Fonda plays a Viet Nam deserter who, after three years of exile, decides to turn, himself in. At the moment of his decision he meets and falls in love with a jaded young fashion model, portrayed by beguiling newcomer Lindsay Wagner.



The Fonda character points out that he is "no Robin Hood." She responds by noting her non-virginal status. Having met in Marrakech, they entrain together to Casablanca and catch a plane for Paris. Neither has at this point found hope in the other — to her, he's just a handsome and unhappy boy; to him, she's merely an attractively honest diversion on his path to punishment.



The strength of Richard De Roy's screenplay, and of Wise's direction, resides not only in the more obvious topicalities of the story but in the tarnished optimism of their characters. The two lack faith even in physical affection, wanting strenuously to avoid a commitment of love in an, at best, awkward situation.



The ultimate beauty of "Two People" comes with its tearless ending in New York City. She refuses to promise to wait for him while he's in a military prison, and he accepts her refusal out of the knowledge that he has passed up options under which they could remain together.



What may make "Two People" most unusual among modern films is its steadfast dedication to individual responsibility in an admittedly imperfect world. Without shouting its message to the skies, Wise's film chips away at its characters' attempts to hide from reality and from themselves.



Fonda's underplaying of his own idealism places their respective backgrounds in credible
opposition — she went through the comfortable motions whereas he took, he now thinks, a foolish action in order to protest the war and its conduct.



These are complex motivations for their feeling drawn to each other, perhaps, but Wise and his actors make them count for something very nearly clean and simple. And their hardest decision, to be lovers without a future, comments in a raw fashion on an intensely human inability to learn from past mistakes.



Most of "Two People" is the stuff from which anxiety-ridden melodrama may be made. Fonda's and Wagner's acting, however, couples wilh Wise's best direction to date (including "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music") to keep "Two People" well out of that category. It is a "misty" picture, mistily photographed in "exotic" locales, yet it retains the tough-minded intelligence behind De Roy's writing. Wonder of wonders, "Two People," in an age of "love is never having to
say you're sorry.

Tom Nickell